Apple files claim to “iPhone5.com” with World Intellectual Property Organization

Fusible spotted the domain claim today under case number D2012-0951. The decision on the case remains “active.” Currently, iPhone5.com sports a forum on the impending Apple smartphone, a topic that has been ripe with rumors since before the launch of the iPhone 4S. Some are speculating that the iPhone 5 could debut in this fiscal quarter (Apple’s third fiscal quarter), but VentureBeat’s Sean Ludwig says not to count on a launch at the company’s developer conference, WWDC. The conference is being held June 11-15 in San Francisco where Apple says it will “share the latest news about iOS and OS X Mountain Lion.” The latter was recently announced and slated to launch this summer.

More likely, we’ll get a sneak peek at iOS 6 than a whole new phone at WWDC. The latest version of iOS 5 was launched in October 2011.

As MacRumors notes, Apple has generally been slow to grab the domain names for its smartphones. It waited almost a year to take over iPhone4.com, and a few weeks for iPhone4s.com (though, the later was being used to push porn sites to visitors). Perhaps this shows Apple has learned to claim its domains early, despite the potential downside of revealing a product name before debut. The term “iPhone 5,” however, has been so widely used, it’s less of a nod to the product itself, and more likely a company simply trying to control its associations.